Trip to Dairy Queen turns bad

As befitting the week before Christmas, the Commerce Police Department reports that most local folks were on their best behavior.

But there were exceptions, including a family outing to Dairy Queen that resulted in four drug-related charges and one traffic violation.

Responding to a call of a vehicle in the drive-through lane with its driver asleep, an officer responded to the South Elm Street restaurant, arriving as the suspect vehicle — driver apparently conscious — pulled out of the restaurant parking lot.
To the officer’s consternation, the vehicle, which contained a female passenger and two small children, pulled left into the southbound lane (traveling north), then turned left again, back into the Dairy Queen parking lot, where the officer made a traffic stop.


According to the arrest report, the officer encountered Phillip Curtis Allen, 50, of 315 Tal Phillips Road, Commerce, and noticed immediately that he had bloodshot eyes and slurred speech.

As he exited the car, the officer said Allen volunteered that he had a “slipped disc” in his back, for which he took the narcotic oxycontin, but he told the officer he’d not taken any medication for three days.

After a field sobriety test that did not satisfy the officer, Allen allegedly agreed to take a blood test, for which he was transported to Northridge Medical Center.

Police charged him with driving under the influence (DUI) of drugs, endangering a child under 14 while DUI and driving on the wrong side of the road. Both DUI charges are pending the outcome of the blood test.

Another officer assisting with the stop talked to the female passenger, Amanda K. Brock, 30, 321 Barnett Road, Nicholson. The arrest report said he observed her bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and that she was drooling from the corners of her mouth.

The report said Brock volunteered that she’d just consumed “multiple” Xanax and that she gave the officer permission to search her purse. Inside, the officer allegedly found three straws, the interiors of which were coated with a white powder residue, a Zip-Loc bag with 16 suspected Xanax and multiple prescription bottles for Xanax, Oxycodone and prescription ibuprofen. In the Oxycodone bottle, the officer reported, were three Xanax pills and one Valium.

The officer asked Brock if the residue in the straws was from a narcotic. According to the report, she said she did not know.

The officer charged her with possession of Schedule 4 narcotics and failure to keep drugs in their original container.